The Wine Press: Hey, Mikey! Drink what you like this Thanksgiving

You’re a wine expert, right? No? OK, well, at least you’d admit to being a food expert. Everybody’s a food expert.

You know what you like; you go to certain restaurants that cook things a certain way that you like. If it doesn’t taste right, you leave and rarely come back. Be honest, you’ve been eating your whole life, and you’ve figured out what tastes good.

So now, imagine that wine is grape juice, with a dash of alcohol. That’s it: grape juice. You pick it up, you taste it, and you go either yum or yuck. Or maybe sometimes you go “meh.” Bottom line: You are an expert in the wines you like.

Guys like me? We have two issues: One, we like just about everything. Remember that picky kid in the Life cereal commercials that ran in the ’70s, Mikey? That’s me. I LIKE it, or just about all of it.

The other issue for wine writers like me is that we drink a lot, I mean, of different wines. Wine writers like to jump around from wine to wine.

But just because wine writers are bored by Chardonnay (I’m not, but plenty are) or look askance at sweet wines (I love sweet wines), doesn’t mean you should, too. Instead, wine’s flavors and aromas should make you happy. It should taste good to you.

And especially at Thanksgiving, when the highest calling is to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome and to find some way to show gratitude for the utterly lucky lives we lead, there shouldn’t be any pretense.

You want Chardonnay? Have a rich, buttery Cakebread or La Crema with your Butterball. Or try a leaner, more mineral-driven version of the grape with Hartford Court, Au Bon Climat or even Dauvissat Chablis from across the pond.

In the mood for Albariño, Spain’s tangy, almost briny white wine? Try Martin Codax, Burgans or my personal obsession, Fillaboa.

Lots of folks prefer softer red wines with their turkey; I think Oregon Pinot Noir is the bomb: Adelsheim, Cristom, Domaine Drouhin, Eyrie, McKinlay, Ponzi and the Kansas City kids at Ayres.

Champagne goes with everything, they say (they’re right), so spring for a bottle of the real thing just this once and find out how equally rich and refreshing great Champagne can be.

You can match your wines with your feast using my Wine Notes from last week’s Chow Town recipes — I chose a Beaujolais to go with the turkey — or you can just pick what you like.

I’ll be drinking the wine that gives me great pleasure: German Riesling. I love it dry, slightly sweet or just plain sweet. On Turkey Day, I drink Donnhoff, Egon Mueller, Fritz Haag, J.J. Pruem, Kuenstler, Moenchhof, Weil, Weins-Pruem, Zilliken and more, like it’s water.

But that’s a different issue for another day. For now, serve people what they want to drink and everybody drink what you like.

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 2:00 AM with the headline "The Wine Press: Hey, Mikey! Drink what you like this Thanksgiving."